How to Humanize Products - Ryan Frederick

Ryan Frederick is a Columbus Ohio-based serial entrepreneur, author of two books: The Founder’s Manual & Sell Naked, and a product person at heart. 

He’s been part of starting and growing several software and service companies. He’s an angel investor; mentors and advises entrepreneurs and start-ups, as well as corporate innovation leaders. And he helps companies build great software products and solve data challenges for competitive advantage as a Principal at AWH, a product and data consulting firm. 

One of the reasons I launched this podcast was to talk to interesting people like Ryan.

An individual who I wouldn’t come across as I focus on enterprise strategy, digital transformation, and immersive tech.

Which is the exact reason I loved this discussion so much. 

I learned a lot in my 40 + minutes chatting with Ryan. We discussed the human elements of building products. The concept of friction, and more specifically, that the best products have the least amount of friction for their end user.

We talked about customer validation, its critical importance for any product owner, and the necessity to approach it ‘in the negative’. People will answer the questions you ask, according to Ryan. So if you ask people what they like about a product, they’ll answer you. What any product owner really wants to know is what their end users don’t like. That’s the catalyst for continuous improvement. 

It’s a topic that has application in so many parts of our lives, and I’m grateful to Ryan for joining us to illuminate some of the darker corners.

Ryan Frederick

Ryan Frederick has had the privilege of being part of starting and growing several software and service companies. He has helped companies grow from inception to viability, through to sustainability. During the evolution of these companies, Ryan has served on company boards and been instrumental in capitalization activities. 

Ryan combines a unique blend of business acumen and technical knowledge having originally been a developer who migrated to the business side. He now helps companies build great software products and solve data challenges for competitive advantage as a Principal at the product and data consulting firm, AWH.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. Each week we’ll tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Matt: [00:00:00] Constraints drive innovation. 

Guest 1: [00:00:04] You figure out how to identify problems and then how to build a [00:00:10] team and, and, and to figure out how you're going to commercialize it. Those are things that are very hard to teach in school in almost every university and [00:00:20] almost every college now, um, has a, an entrepreneurship track if not degree inside of their business school, but you know, those are [00:00:30] those still often fall flat because.

Entrepreneurship and building products and creating companies is still very experiential.

[00:00:50] [00:00:40] Matt: [00:00:50] Hey everyone, it's Matt here for another episode of thinking inside the box, the show where each week we discuss the most complex issues related to work and culture. [00:01:00] If you're interested in checking out our other content, Find us at bento, hr.com, wherever you find your favorite podcasts by searching, thinking inside the box.

[00:01:10] And now exclusively in virtual reality, each Thursday at 6:00 PM Pacific standard time in Altspace VR. In today's episode, I [00:01:20] chat with Ryan Fredrick, a Columbus Ohio based serial entrepreneur, the author of two books, the founder's manual and sell naked and a [00:01:30] product person at heart. Ryan has been part of starting and growing several software and service organizations.

He's an angel investor [00:01:40] and now mentors and advises entrepreneurs and startups as well as corporate innovation leaders on how to build their businesses. And he helps those [00:01:50] businesses build great software products and solve data challenges for competitive advantage. As a principal at AWS H a product and data [00:02:00] consulting firm.

I'll be honest. One of the reasons I launched this podcast was to talk to interesting people like Ryan, an individual who I wouldn't normally come [00:02:10] across in my day-to-day activities, as I focus largely on enterprise strategy, digital transformation, and now immersive technologies, which is exactly the reason [00:02:20] why I love this conversation so much.

I learned a ton about products in speaking with Ryan in our 40 plus minutes, I learned about [00:02:30] the importance of having human elements in building products. I learned about the concept of friction and as Ryan puts it that the best [00:02:40] products have the least amount of friction. So far as the end user is concerned, and we discuss the importance of going into the customer validation [00:02:50] process in the negative.

Asking somebody, what they don't like about something, although perhaps counter-intuitive is infinitely more effective than asking [00:03:00] somebody what they do like about something. If you're really trying to drive improvements in your product or your service for that matter, it was a really [00:03:10] awesome and enlightening conversation.

And I want to thank Ryan for joining me in what was a great chat. So without further ado, Ryan Fredrick. 

[00:03:20] Guest 1: [00:03:20] Hello, Ryan, how are you doing today? I'm well, how are 

Matt: [00:03:22] you? I'm doing really well. And, um, here for this conversation, because it's a topic that we'll topics, frankly, that we haven't explored [00:03:30] with too much detail on the podcast.

Um, specifically the idea of products in particular. Um, we talked a lot about personal [00:03:40] growth and, you know, applications of services. And organizational cultures, that's kind of a, you know, those are three themes that permeate, if you will, throughout [00:03:50] their first 70 plus episodes of this podcast. Um, but as we evolve the content, I'm really eager to explore different topics.

And when we had a previous conversation around products, um, it really peaked [00:04:00] my interest and I want to get there. So, but before I do get too excited about that, maybe just walk our audience through a bit of boat who Ryan Fredrick is and what you're all about. 

Guest 1: [00:04:09] Well, first [00:04:10] I have to say, cause we were chatting before we started recording this about, um, how you're looking super hip today with your hat on backwards, you know, and then I see [00:04:20] your picture come up in zoom because we turned our cameras off and that looks like a different person.

It is a different 

Matt: [00:04:24] person. 

Guest 1: [00:04:27] So that, that part is, it's funny, you look [00:04:30] very different, casual and serious formal you, but you know, but both are equally appealing. I'm not saying one is worse than the other. Um, so [00:04:40] I got into this all very serendipitously. I went to a technical school to learn how to be a developer.

And then got really fortunate, uh, [00:04:50] joined a startup, uh, early on. We didn't know that we were a startup. We were just a small business, you know, with, uh, with a new product, trying to make our way in the world. And then we had some success with it and then [00:05:00] identified another problems to solve as part of that and started another company.

Um, with the investors in the first company to do that and, [00:05:10] um, and had some success with that. And then, you know, it just, it just opens up other opportunities, right? When you figure out how to identify problems and then [00:05:20] how to build a team and, and, and to figure out how you're going to commercialize it.

Those are things that are very hard to teach in school in almost [00:05:30] every university and almost every college now, um, has a, an entrepreneurship track, if not degree, inside of their business school. [00:05:40] But, you know, th those are those still often fall flat because entrepreneurship and building products and creating companies is still very experiential.

Um, and so I don't, [00:05:50] I think it has to be more on the job learning and training that it is something that's an academic exercise. And so it was just really fortunate that I had that, [00:06:00] you know, on the job training, experiential exposure really early on. And, and then. Also learned over time that it, you know, success in with one product in one company [00:06:10] doesn't equate to success with a different product than a different company, trying to solve a different problem with different customers.

Because even though I've been a part of a couple of successes, I've also been a [00:06:20] couple of abject failures and it, in, in looking back, we could sort of see what we did wrong and then it seemed to obvious, but when you're [00:06:30] doing it wrong, it doesn't seem obvious that you're doing it wrong. And, and so I glued to every aspect of it from stuff going well and stuff going not well at all.

[00:06:40] And it brings you back and also makes you really want to honor the fundamentals and the principles of doing it well, when you've done it well [00:06:50] and done it wrong. And then you see. How doing it wrong, you sort of violated all the fundamental principles of that. Give you a chance to do it well, and to have some success with it.

[00:07:00] And so now I want a product firm and advise, you know, on products and companies and do some investing and, you know, write a couple of books here and there now. And so [00:07:10] it's, it's evolved, um, from, you know, me mostly doing, you know, the, the product work and being very deep in it. And the commercialization work of trying to build a company around it.

[00:07:20] Doing it with clients and trying to help others do it. But I like this as I like this just as much as, as you know, building the products and, and, uh, and trying to [00:07:30] find somebody to buy it and to make them commercially successful. So it's been, it's been a good ride. 

Matt: [00:07:35] Well, first off, thank you for definitely being diplomatic about my appearance both before and after my, [00:07:40] uh, COVID transformation.

Um, and secondly, a number of the things that you mentioned resonate with me, my background story, for those who don't know it, [00:07:50] I spent 20 years in the corporate world. I came out of high school, went right into, into business, right into the corporate world at a time when that was very much the aspirational career [00:08:00] path for the people that I had surrounded myself with, it was.

Work for a big firm, you know, chase that title, um, you know, chase those opportunities. Um, and [00:08:10] the world's shifted the shit it's shifted under our very feet. It was probably shifting before I entered the market, to be honest, but I quickly became aware of the necessity [00:08:20] to evolve the way I thought about.

Economics enterprise organizations, um, just business in general. And it led me to a path [00:08:30] much later in my career, almost 20 years into it where I like you'd make, you mentioned pursued an educational path. Did an entrepreneurship emphasis during [00:08:40] that path and found it very lacking when it actually came time to apply that in my own business.

And since that time I've [00:08:50] learned countless lessons about being an entrepreneur. Most of which as in the side, Are above the shoulders, how you manage yourself, how you manage the people around you. [00:09:00] You know, it's funny if you'd asked me prior to the jump into entrepreneurship, I would tell you that I was pretty emotionally intelligent, um, that I built my career largely on, [00:09:10] especially near the end on the ability to influence people.

Um, I led lots of large transformational projects. I was very good at shepherding and moving resources through nebulous problems to [00:09:20] solve, to solve major strategic issues. With limited budgets. Uh, it was very good at that, uh, which I thought would translate directly into the world of [00:09:30] entrepreneurship and surprise, surprise.

Only some of that came over. But what also came over with that was a bunch of habits that needed to be changed. And I think one of the benefits [00:09:40] of the approach was I was, I was smart enough to know that I need to surround myself with people that had done this transition before, um, that were able to give me [00:09:50] counsel when I stubbed my toe and made some mistakes.

When I tried to treat my calendar like I did as an executive and stuff, my meetings for, you know, Monday through Sunday, but [00:10:00] not have to leave any time for the actual work itself. When I, you know, made inevitable mistakes around having to learn how to sell. You know, as an internal, you know, resources and [00:10:10] internal consultants, I have the market cornered.

I have an exclusivity around the business, but when you go to the broader market, a whole bunch of other factors come into play, which is why I'm really interested in our chat today about [00:10:20] product evolution and, and the, and the customer aspect of that and all that to say, That you need to, you need to evolve your [00:10:30] thinking today, more than ever because the market, the world society is shifting and whether we want to position it as corporate versus [00:10:40] entrepreneur, whether they want to talk about this against the backdrop of all the social changes that are occurring.

Whether we want to discuss this in terms of, you know, the rise of, of the individual and mindfulness and [00:10:50] individualization, the world is changing. And I think one of the biggest things that I've learned over the last couple of years is the necessity to be lifelong in terms of learning and to be [00:11:00] constantly pursuing, if you will, an agile approach to life.

Whereas I think life before had a very much a waterfall view. You went to university, you got that [00:11:10] job. You spend time in those career. Maybe it bounced around to a couple of companies, but it was largely static because the change cycles were longer because there was less volatility. If you will, in the [00:11:20] system.

We're now in a space where people are having to constantly evolve themselves, both professionally and personally. Um, so I believe that entrepreneurship in particular, best [00:11:30] positions you for those types of lessons that you just simply don't get. When you look at firms more broadly, I'm curious for you, Ryan.

I mean, amongst all the other things that you [00:11:40] shared, what are some things that you've. Learned from yourself or some things perhaps that have been affirmed in the last 12 to 15 months. Um, as we've all [00:11:50] gone through this transformation that you think you can directly tie back to your earlier experiences, learning to be an entrepreneur and learning to be a bit more adaptive in your 

Guest 1: [00:11:57] approach.

Yeah. I think that, [00:12:00] and you make some, some really good points. Um, I think that. It it's a reaffirmation. That being uncomfortable. It is [00:12:10] actually good. And that's where the learning is. And that's where the growth is. And that's where the evolution is. And we often lose sight of that because. We're [00:12:20] kind of innately wired to seek comfort and security.

Well, not kind of, I mean, that's part of the hierarchy, right? We, we seek, you know, security and we seek safety and comfort [00:12:30] and like every furniture commercial that I've seen on TV, now it is, is advertising. These chairs and these sofas and sectionals that [00:12:40] presumably I think there's catheters built into some of them.

And I don't think you have to get up from some of them for like nine hours, if you don't want to. I mean, and when I see that, it makes me [00:12:50] sad a little bit because. If you seek that much comfort where you want to buy a couch, that you can charge your devices has, you know, [00:13:00] beverage coolers and warmers, and you don't have to leave it for, you know, a significant amount of time.

That's probably the wrong perspective to have, because I think that that [00:13:10] being uncomfortable and sort of actually pursuing and being okay with discomfort is something that, that we've got, we've gotten sort of [00:13:20] lazy around. And I think, and that's where being an entrepreneur and creating new products, you embrace that discomfort because you know, you're not going to be right immediately.

You know, [00:13:30] it's going to be an evolution, you know, it's going to be iteration like crazy. And, and so I think that there's lots of value in that, but we don't really come to the process of [00:13:40] building new products and to starting companies very well adept at being okay with discomfort. It's something that we, we have to overcome.

And [00:13:50] eventually we get more comfortable with being uncomfortable. 

Matt: [00:13:54] That resonates for a ton of reasons. I think about you're right when you don't build that muscle around agility, [00:14:00] any major shift, any minor shift for that matter to how you envision the plan going out can be seen as incredibly disruptive and.

I think [00:14:10] about in the context of product evolution and the customer experience, you know, a lot of times the ideation around that is occurring outside of the customer narrative. Like [00:14:20] it's occurring with founders or in marketing meetings, strategic meetings, where people are trying to. Project or anticipate the needs [00:14:30] of the market or of a customer group or of a segment.

And you put a lot of energy, you tie up a lot of ego and resources and time [00:14:40] into, you know, a product or a concept or a service. And it can be very, it can be very, um, easy to get attached to that [00:14:50] vision. But when you build agility into your model in whatever way, shape or form, and you, you allow for iteration, you allow for [00:15:00] imperfection, it just sets you up for more success in a number of ways.

One, your product is going to be infinitely better through an iterative approach where there's a two-way [00:15:10] dialogue with your ultimate. And user, but then individually and from a team perspective. Not tying up worth and value and ego [00:15:20] into how closely does the final product resemble where you started, does wonders in terms of helping people be more innovative and more open to [00:15:30] illuminating challenges and just more willing to contribute to the broader purpose.

Hey everyone, it's Matt here. I hope you're enjoying the show [00:15:40] before we continue. I wanted to give a quick shout out to one of our sponsors Benji. The future of work is today and Matt Parsons and the team at [00:15:50] Benji have figured out a really cool hands-on learning solution that you need to be considering as you transition your organizational learning and team [00:16:00] building and engagement online.

Now I spend several hours a day myself on video platforms. So whether it's zoom or Skype or go to [00:16:10] meeting, they're great. They allow me to interact with people and see them in all parts of the world, though. If you're like me, once those calls go on a bit too long, I start to get a little [00:16:20] bit. Distracted.

And it's not too long before I'm reaching for my smartphone or opening up another tab on my laptop that doesn't happen with Benji. They have a [00:16:30] catalog of interactive team exercises that makes it really easy for organizations and individual consultants to develop engaging solutions at [00:16:40] any scale. And I'll be honest, I've been so impressed with the tool myself, that we're actually looking at using Benji to power our virtual workshops with client facing [00:16:50] products.

So I'm actually working right now with Matt one-on-one to develop a journey mapping exercise. So we can take clients through the employee experience and [00:17:00] aluminate thousands of dollars and hours of inefficiencies that organizations tend to have in their onboarding and hiring processes. It's a great tool.

And [00:17:10] because you are a listener of the thinking inside the box podcast, you're going to get a special benefit as well. I've talked to Matt. He wants to give as many people as possible access to this [00:17:20] tool so they can make online learning more engaging. And you can do so as well by using the discount code bento 20.

So if you log on to the Benji website, which is my [00:17:30] benji.com and you're as impressed with the solution as I am, then enter the code in Benji 20 and you'll receive 20% off your purchase. And with that being said, [00:17:40] we'll return back to regular.

Guest 1: [00:17:44] Absolutely. Yeah. The, the objective and creating. A new product [00:17:50] is, is not to be right. It's to end up in a place of value, right. For, for users and, you know, too often, because of the way we're wired, we're [00:18:00] wired, you know, w we tried to defend, you know, being right. And we try to prove that we understand it and, and, and that w we've got the right vision and we've got the right approach.

[00:18:10] And none of that really matters. I think that the best product teams and the best startup founders for that matter are the most humble [00:18:20] and the ones who operate with the ego in driving less of the equation and their actions and their participation in the process. [00:18:30] Because if you can put to the product and users first, and if you, if their interests, you know, uh, lead the way.

Then [00:18:40] you're, you're much more apt to be okay when you get it wrong. Right. And you, and you, you interpret something that users told you into the product in a way that [00:18:50] you then take it back to the users. And the users are like, Whoa, wow. We somehow really disconnected a mess because that's not what we were talking about at all.

And you're okay with that [00:19:00] because you realize that it's the objective isn't to be right. The objective is to end up in the right place. And that's a very different perspective and mindset, [00:19:10] but it's also hard to get to that point because we all want to be right. We all have egos. And if you're building a product and starting a company, presumably around that product, or [00:19:20] even building a product inside of an enterprise, You know, we want to be proven, right?

Because there's, we've got professional credibility on the line as part of it. Uh, and we get [00:19:30] paid right to, to presumably be right. And if you're inside of an enterprise or, or investors have invested in your product in your company, you are, you are being [00:19:40] compensated to be right. But that's not really the right way to think about it, the right way to think about it is I'm being, I'm being paid to figure out what's right.

Not for me to [00:19:50] personally be right. 

Matt: [00:19:50] Subtle difference, major shift in terms of how you think about it. One thing we talked about offline Ryan that stuck with me was you mentioned the idea [00:20:00] of friction and that the best products, the best solutions available are the ones with the least amount of friction.

[00:20:10] Why did you say that? 

Guest 1: [00:20:11] Yeah. And it's really an evolution too, that we're just beginning to understand that it used to be the first products. One that if you are [00:20:20] first to market in a category, you had such a lead on everybody else that was chasing you. You had first mover advantage and rarely would people catch [00:20:30] up.

Unless you, unless you've totally screwed it up first mover advantage meant everything. And then we transitioned to, well, first mover advantage didn't make as much differences [00:20:40] as just building a better mouse trap and having a better product because the better product would then be, be found out and being first didn't matter as much.

Now we've [00:20:50] evolved. I think, to a period where being the best product still, you know, is relevant. But now the best products are often the ones with the least [00:21:00] amount of user friction and, and there's micro friction inside of products. And there are macro friction and macro friction or things like how does [00:21:10] someone become aware of your product?

How do they get access to the product or 

Matt: [00:21:14] in all the cases? How does the customer think through some of these [00:21:20] nuances around that? Um, Yeah, 

Guest 1: [00:21:21] it's really interesting. Yeah. And so you've got, you know, these macro friction points, and then there's a bunch of micro friction points. And part of the [00:21:30] objective of every really successful product now is how do you get as close to the user's current reality with the, with your product [00:21:40] as possible, so that the distance between their current reality and their new reality using your product?

Is as close as possible. So they don't have to [00:21:50] change their behavior. So they don't have to change their operating model. So they don't have to think about it that much. And so the value equation goes up exponentially. The [00:22:00] closer you can get your, their new reality with your product, to their current reality and current state as possible.

This is, this is making [00:22:10] huge shifts in the way that we think about. Last mile things. Right. And, and you know, how do e-commerce and retail and all of those things, [00:22:20] but it matters even in places like virtual meetings, right. Uh, zoom has taken off and zoom, you served all the other products that were [00:22:30] in the space because zoom were, frankly is, it was, and by and large still is.

Less friction right. [00:22:40] Than some of the other products in the space, you know, no disrespect to some of the other products, right. We happen to be doing this on zoom. And, um, and I like zoom better as you know, [00:22:50] millions of other people do because some of the other products just are harder to fundamentally using, get into a meeting than zoom is.

And. Zoom figured out how to be less [00:23:00] friction and therefore more value than the others in the space who had been in the space for 10 years, frankly. So reducing friction [00:23:10] sounds easy on the surface. It's actually really hard to carry out in practice because reducing friction means that you're looking for the gaps [00:23:20] where it could be.

One one user interaction can make all the difference. So it can be the re the, the reduction of one user interaction that makes a product [00:23:30] go from high friction to low friction. Give you a really quick example. There's a company called root insurance. They IPO recently there, and I know [00:23:40] the team there. Um, well, and, and their product is an app that you download on your phone.

And it tracks your driving habits. And then it gives you a rate for car insurance [00:23:50] based upon your actual driving habits versus demographic information. When they first released the app, most of their users that they gave rates to were not [00:24:00] converting to, to actually have a policy. And when they looked at it where people were getting hung up was on canceling their existing car insurance.

So [00:24:10] something that would, that would take five minutes that could potentially save somebody, hundreds of dollars of the year was preventing them from actually [00:24:20] getting a policy through route versus their current policy route figured out that they could turn, they could put a button in place in the app.

That [00:24:30] would give route permission to cancel someone's car insurance policy essentially act as a power of attorney on their behalf to cancel their current car insurance policy. And their [00:24:40] conversions went from like 17% to 72%. That's a great example of friction, the friction of having to cancel an existing car insurance [00:24:50] policy.

Was preventing people from saving money and getting a new car insurance policy. And once route figured out how to remove that friction point, it changed the [00:25:00] trajectory of the company and the product, the, the, the friction as part of it and their overall value proposition. So friction, easy to talk about.

Hard to [00:25:10] identify and hard to solve 

Matt: [00:25:11] well and friction to be viewed in the context of the end user of the customer of the stakeholder and not friction in the context [00:25:20] of the person who's designing the solution to begin with. Absolutely. 

Guest 1: [00:25:23] It really calls for a user empathy, right? You've gotta be able to put yourself in the shoes of the users and understand.

[00:25:30] What is their experience like, and are there opportunities to remove more and more friction and not just say, you know what, it's good enough because good [00:25:40] enough now 

Matt: [00:25:41] isn't it enough? Well, you have to ask yourself, um, a bunch of questions that I think are, um, more challenging questions in terms of what are you [00:25:50] actually trying to accomplish with.

The solution with the product, with the service. It's, you know, the correlation for me in a, in a corporate context in the enterprise context is I think about all the [00:26:00] times where we would force a decision or force an initiative through the, you know, the enterprise where we did very limited in terms of.

[00:26:10] Validation of the concept with the ultimate end user, uh, where we spent lots of time, making sure that we put emphasis around how to sell it to people versus just go [00:26:20] the extra mile to ask them what they wanted. Um, you know, Ryan, I think about engagement surveys and this may seem like a strange correlation, but it maybe just hang with me for a second.

[00:26:30] Um, I spent a lot of years managing engagement programs for organizations, major organizations, where we would we'd survey a hundred thousands of people. [00:26:40] And it was always surprising to me how this process would go. And I could tell you that in the number of companies I worked in, this was the process, essentially with some minor tweaks to it, you do a survey, [00:26:50] get a snapshot in time of how people are feeling, sentiment, um, engagement, things of that nature.

You roll the data up. Into a report. You [00:27:00] segment the data into demographic information, location for role, et cetera, you would provide that information in a very high level sanitized [00:27:10] version, too. Uh, an executive group, a shareholder group, a board to provide them with some visibility to what was happening at that time.

And then you would with the board or with [00:27:20] executive team ideate, some solutions to areas of opportunity. So if there was a challenge around training, well then perhaps the idea is we need to offer more tuition [00:27:30] reimbursement, um, or if there's a challenge around compensation, or maybe we need to adjust the bonus program, very little energy was.

Placed on actually spending time with the people who [00:27:40] actually answered the surveys to, to pull out necessary context. Because of course, with the survey, it's a consistent formulaic question and answer [00:27:50] process. There's very little in the real way of space to actually put nuance into it. And then we'd inevitably roll these solutions out.

And they'd [00:28:00] missed the Mark. We would come up with solutions that were not relevant for the end user, but I don't know why we were surprised. I mean, we, as stakeholders had very different needs, we were looking [00:28:10] at it through a very different lens. Um, and we ultimately learned that if you, if you want to improve engagement in organizations, the most simple way to do is [00:28:20] ask people where we can be better and take the information.

Decide what can be done and what can't be done, given [00:28:30] limitations around budget and resources, work with them to co-design solutions that make sense, put those solutions in place. And then tell them that you did it and [00:28:40] repeat, and it didn't get any more complicated than that. But to your point, there were so many people in this ecosystem that ego and I need to be right, or I'm being paid to [00:28:50] be right, or to come up with the best, most innovative, cool ideas.

So when people were like that, we're in the process that we never actually got to the part of, well, Blocking and tackling, [00:29:00] picking up the phone, going to see people onsite, having conversations while not the most romantic way of, of doing things. It was ultimately so much more effective. So what are we trying to do here?

Are we trying [00:29:10] to be effective and actually change things? Or we trying to create a system that looks cool on the surface, but actually accomplishes nothing. Um, now maybe there's some real strong correlations here [00:29:20] because. You know, when we talked earlier, Ryan, you, you, you mentioned before the necessity to ask questions to your customers in the negative.

Um, and then again, that also [00:29:30] stuck with me because I think about all the times where we've asked our clients or we've asked stakeholders, you know, questions about feedback, how are we doing? Um, we didn't ask questions though, in the negative. And I'm curious [00:29:40] why first off, how you arrived at that, and what's been the impact of shifting to customer validation when using the negative 

Guest 1: [00:29:47] perspective.

Yeah, I came across it. In [00:29:50] touring a client engagement. And, uh, we were working on a, some concepts for a client to, to solve a problem and to figure out, [00:30:00] you know, what was going to be the, um, the best approach to solve this problem. And as we were engaging with them, they shared some of the [00:30:10] research that they had already done around the problem.

And when I started looking at the research that they had done and the questions that they had asked some of their customers around the problem, I [00:30:20] realized that all of their questions were framed in the positive. And the questions were framed, you know, in a manner like, you know, tell us how this is going to be [00:30:30] valued to you.

Tell us why you would use this. Um, tell us, tell us how this is going to make your life better. Tell the city, tell us how this is going to position us in how you're, how you're going to feel better [00:30:40] about us as a company, right. Et cetera. And as I started reading the questions and thinking about that, I was like, Everything that they've gathered here is now [00:30:50] suspect because every question they asked is framed in the positive.

And as I started reading the responses and then looked at what they had built [00:31:00] around this problem, and the reason that they were engaging with us is because what they had built, didn't it wasn't going anywhere. It was customers were not adopting it. If they did, they weren't [00:31:10] staying with it. And they, they were sort of perplexed on why given the fact that they had done this research and this validation yet that these digital tools that they were now giving to [00:31:20] customers weren't being used.

And as I started to connect the dots between how they did the validation and what they built and gave to their customers to use, I [00:31:30] realized that they, they built. What they wanted to build, and they justified it by asking questions to customers in the positive of what they already [00:31:40] decided they were going to build.

And so then I, so then I said, be interesting to go back to the same set of customers and flip the questions to the negative [00:31:50] and say, tell us what you don't like about this till you tell us why you wouldn't use it. Tell us why it wouldn't be a value to you. Tell us, you know, why this wouldn't [00:32:00] impact you at all, you know, et cetera.

And we did that and we went back to them and not surprisingly, we got a complete different set of responses and [00:32:10] answers, which if hadn't done that way to begin with the way that they built the product to then take to the customers would never have been built. And [00:32:20] certainly wouldn't have been built in that way.

And so that was really an epiphany for me, that, that. We often do our user validation and our user [00:32:30] research. Incorrectly because we, we bias it by positioning the research and the validation in the positive, rather than positioning it in the negative. [00:32:40] And the reason you have to do that is because most people will answer the question that you ask.

So if you say, tell me what you like about this. If you're asking them [00:32:50] that about a painting, they will tell you what they like about it. But what they're not telling you is what they don't like about it. So you have to give them permission to also tell you what they don't like about it. [00:33:00] And then you have to weigh well, which one matters more.

And if they say what they don't like about it, more vehemently and aggressively [00:33:10] and demonstratively than what they do like about it. You've got to react to the negative feedback, way more than you're reacting to the positive feedback, because the positive feedback. And [00:33:20] if you only do validation on the positive, you are going to move forward on a bunch of false positives that we'll never be able to get converted into something that's actually going to work.

[00:33:30] It's 

Matt: [00:33:30] again, a subtle shift in thinking with. Absolutely material effects and you're right. I think we all, this is where I'm a bit of like human [00:33:40] behavior comes into play. Most people that I know want to be nice. So when you ask people what they like about products, they'll, they'll, you know, they'll search deep.

[00:33:50] And at the end, if they have a hard time finding something, they'll search for something that they like about the product, but to your point, What you're actually asking, what you're trying to get to is how can we improve? And this [00:34:00] is where putting your ego aside becomes really important as a product manager, as a founder, as a, as a person inside of a business to aluminate where are the [00:34:10] areas of opportunity?

Because ultimately to your point, if we assume we're going to go through an agile process, an iterative process where people are going to evolve, where products and services will evolve, [00:34:20] that feedback is the life. But that that constructive feedback is the lifeblood of that evolution process in service to ultimately finding your place [00:34:30] in the market.

Guest 1: [00:34:30] Absolutely. And it. It's scary territory. And because it's, it's, you know, unknown territory because when you, [00:34:40] when you go to users and you ask them questions, framed in the positive, it's less uncomfortable, it's less scary. It's less [00:34:50] intimidating because you, by and large know what kind of responses you're going to get back.

And if you get some sort of negative responses, right, they're going to be sort of lukewarm negative, and it's [00:35:00] not going to be all that harsh likely. But when you, when you go to users and you frame it in the negative, what you're also saying to yourself, and I think this is an [00:35:10] important thing for product teams and founders.

When you go to users with your validation framed than the negative, where you're also saying [00:35:20] is we don't have the answer, you, our users, our customers have the answer and we need to elicit from you. Okay. The feedback [00:35:30] that gets us closer to the understanding of what the right answer is, and that exists with you, not with us.

And that's a great foundational mental [00:35:40] shift that every time you go to users doing feedback and validation, the negative that you reinforce for yourself 

Matt: [00:35:47] and for your team, I'm curious, Ryan, I [00:35:50] mean, as we look forward into 2021 and onward, I'm curious, what are some of the things that you're working on?

What are some of the things that get you excited about the year ahead? 

Guest 1: [00:35:59] Yeah, [00:36:00] it's um, Yeah, not surprising that, you know, the shifts that have been happening and you referenced a lot of them, you know, early in the conversation are creating [00:36:10] lots of opportunities and, and identifying new problems to be solved.

And, and so we're fortunate, uh, at AWS my product from, to be [00:36:20] able to engage with clients on a lot of these new problems and, and, and challenges and opportunities. Um, one of them, but we have a client that's actually been a client for awhile [00:36:30] that has gone through an evolution that, that I don't think it's that uncommon anymore.

They started out with a piece of, of [00:36:40] hardware, a connected piece of a hardware or an IOT company. But it was very hardware driven. It ended up in the hardware was award-winning a one 26, [00:36:50] 27 international design awards beating out the likes of Apple and Nike and Sony. So a terrific physical product piece of hardware.

The [00:37:00] challenge became it's no, one's got, you know, room. This is it. This is a piece of exercise. Equipment turns out no one in their gym or in their home [00:37:10] has a spot in the corner, just waiting for a $50,000 piece of exercise equipment to show up. So even though the hardware piece was [00:37:20] incredible, right. From a business model commercialization, and then ultimately product success perspective, it was challenging.

And then we said, all right, well, what if we [00:37:30] took the digital guts out of the machine? And we allowed it to be used on analog pieces of exercise equipment that would then, you know, make, um, things that [00:37:40] already are in gyms and already in rehabilitation clinics, you know, et cetera, or digital, that was better.

But now what we're doing with that particular company, that particular [00:37:50] product is saying, well, what do we need the hardware at all for? Why aren't we just using cameras that are on everybody's device, right. And that are ubiquitous. [00:38:00] And we track someone's work out and someone's movement via the camera.

And then we give them feedback and we can even give them immediate feedback through machine learning [00:38:10] of whether they're doing the exercise. Properly and, and doing it, you know, to an adequate level. And so this particular client and company have, [00:38:20] has evolved from hardware dependent to sort of hybrid right.

Hardware dependent to now. Hardware [00:38:30] agnostic and independent. And I think we're going to see more shifts of that nature, where we go from being heavy UX, heavy [00:38:40] UI, around things as well to being almost no UI and no UX, because I think that that in the part of the back to the friction piece, [00:38:50] Their original sort of plan and the way to solve the problem was high, high friction, right?

Hardware dependent, big piece of [00:39:00] equipment, super expensive, hard to get anywhere, et cetera. Now, very, very low friction and ubiquitous to anybody. And I think [00:39:10] that we're going to see that transformation in lots of spaces of where we go from something that's very. High friction and sort of high [00:39:20] user experience down to low friction and almost no user experience.

And it's, uh, it, it, it takes some time to go through that, that [00:39:30] evolution with a product. But I think we're going to see lots more of that. Where more and more products are going to be almost no UI [00:39:40] and all as very embedded, right into other things that we're already doing and other things that we're already using.

And it's going to make it really easy for us to use those [00:39:50] products and to keep using them because they are so embedded into what we already have and what we already do. And those that were the real opportunities to win, I think are going to be [00:40:00] moving forward, which just makes 

Matt: [00:40:01] sense in an era where we're all overwhelmed with the amount of choices and the amount of obligations and information that we're receiving [00:40:10] the idea to be intentional about weaving your, offer your product, your service into something that's already preexisting that provides a net [00:40:20] benefit in terms of time being spent.

To me, it makes all the sense in the world. Um, and I th and I, I welcomed the shift as a consumer, but also as a, as an entrepreneur to see [00:40:30] product designers, product developers like yourself, where I, and thinking through problems differently. Because ultimately it's necessary. And if we're going to [00:40:40] evolve and evolve our thinking, but also evolve what we're able to accomplish, we're going to have to let go of some of these legacy thoughts around, you know, friction being akin to [00:40:50] value.

And, um, you know, that the things that are hard or are worth getting, and like there's some, some, some legacy beliefs that we just need to kind of put aside once and for all. 

[00:41:00] Guest 1: [00:40:59] Yeah, for sure. And, and, you know, complexity bias is, is a very real thing and, and it, and some people listening may not have heard of complexity bias before.

[00:41:10] It's essentially a human perspective that we don't think a complex problem can be solved simply. And so w because we believe [00:41:20] that we then tend to solve complex problems with concept complex solutions. And the real magic happens when you solve a complex [00:41:30] problem in the S in the simplest possible manner.

Very hard to do. But when that happens, that's when you really tapped into something that has [00:41:40] probably exponential value. 

Matt: [00:41:41] Ryan. Thank you so much for the time today. It's been a really interesting conversation. Uh, I really enjoyed the chat, learned a lot and, uh, look forward to staying in 

Guest 1: [00:41:49] touch with you.

Yeah, [00:41:50] thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Join is Walton

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